so so so! its SPY ARASHI!

So i've FINALLY posted my first ever multi chap! And it is such a big deal for me because my multi chaps all never get finished, hence all I've posted are one shots. Even if its split into two parts because the story got too long it was still a one shot. But now I have a multi chaptered fic proper! Even though the length of each chapter varies greatly because of how the story flows and all... some chapters are too short, but because of how the story is structured I really have no choice but to keep it at that length. Well, the starting bit will be about each of the members... and I believe each member deserves their own chapter rather than having them share it with someone else, just because I couldn’t think of enough to write in their intro. That's not fair isn't it? :P Hopefully you wont find the story pace too slow because of that? Idk. Arghs I'm so unsure of myself hahaha. And part of that uncertainty lies in the fact that I'm still going back to edit some of my early chapters. And previous editing and a lame mistake on my part (I actually forgot the story line) meant that I have to further edit/add on to my story so that everything will fit. Will I actually like it the way I 'mistakenly' edit the fic, it fits together very nicely and all. Only that because of that blunder now I have more editing to make hahaha. It is necessary though! Before that the story will pretty full of loopholes and I didn’t like how I totally grossed over some rather significant events in the story.

But I'm moving the story fairly... slowly? Idk. I'm very detailed and I'm following the character's growth very closely so although I've written a lot of words, the story has not advanced much chronologically. Then again I've read books where one whole book of 400++ pages only advances the story by a day and you have to read the next book in the series for the next day. Nope, I'm not at that level yet hahaha. But this story... its been over 2 years in the making. I had the idea not long after I became an Arashi fan, right after I finished reading Alliance of the Storm by yarukizero. That story will forever be my favourite Arashi fanfic! Even though new stories and new favourites come and go... Alliance of the Storm will have a special place in my heart... I love fantasy fics and even though I've not read harry potter then, I was totally drawn to that fic. You can say that because of that fic I got interested in harry potter? Hahaha. Finally read harry potter recently though. :) But yes, where was I? Alliance of the Storm got me started on writing fanfics! Spy Arashi was the first fic I wrote, even though it was certainly not the first fic that I posted. (No. 27th actually, no wait, 28th, since there's a contest fic that has been posted already, only that its not yet on my LJ and names have yet to be revealed) And guess what? Its still not finished yet! Hahaha.

In fact, the whole sega is far from being finished. I had started a new series, and then I realized that the story and this spy arashi could fit well together. The new series would take place roughly 15 years after this first story. Yeah. 15 years. Why? Because it's Arashi's 15th year anniversary now. So yeah, that's why I finally decided I'd better start posting the fic this year if I intend for the story to coincide with their 15th year anniversary, and I DO want that! So yup... that's two series intended for the fic. Then I realized that my first series seems to be... kind of... long. By the time it gets to the erm... 'turning point?' in the story, the story would have been long enough to be a series by itself... so I decided to split the series further into two parts. Well should I just say my planned series names? Here goes! Right now we are at Humble Beginnings, and the second story in the series will be The Birth of a Legend, whereas the third shall be The Return of the Legend. Spy Arashi was the erm.... placeholder name I came up with for my fic, but I could never come up with anything better, and so it stayed. Hmm I hope I didn’t spoil too much of the story here... well it won't seem like a spoiler now for sure... but when I get to say the end of series two... kekeke. No matter. Right now I'm not even finished with series 1 yet. Opps. And I have my JLPT to study for arghs.... and my Arashi shows to watch! Ohohoh dare mo shiranai on music station last night!

Ah yes. I've been listening in to radio broadcasts by arashi ohno on mixlr. Its great fun! She normally broadcasts on Friday nights, 9pm Singapore/Malaysia/China time (+8 GMT) or 10 pm Japan time. Its great fun listening in, and more importantly, live chatting with all the other Arashi fans. Its like, the first time I've live chatted with so many other Arashi fans from all over the world (well mostly Asia because of the broadcast time) and it makes me hyper every time! Makes me want to broadcast too haha! I'd like to do podcasts too. Though podcasts wont be as fun because its missing the live interaction feature... hmm. We'll see ne...? Oh there'll be a broadcast tonight by Mio Matsumoto, around 8pm Singapore time, or 9pm Japan time. Do tune in if you're free :P Hmm posting this really makes me want to try my hand at broadcasting hahaha. I just hope that I won't get all nervous once I start speaking hahaha. One thing I'm afraid about is the commitment. Like if I start paying for a mixlr subscription than I better make the most out of my subscription right? Hahaha. Meh. So many things that I wanna do. Not enough time!

Hmm... its been quite long since I've updated here right? A little on my real life status. On the 19th earlier this month I went for another x-ray and though the bone has not completely joined, my doctor was satisfied enough to allow me to walk. The infection's all clear too. So since last Tuesday I've been working really hard in the lab! I had like a HUGE backlog of over 200 samples to do qPCR for after all, and more samples were coming in every week. Now that I look at the date and think about it, I am quite impressed with myself too... after all in less than 2 weeks I did nanodrop and finished qPCR for nearly half of the samples! And that was including doing DNA extraction on Monday! It certainly feels like I've been back into the lab way longer hahaha. Oh yeah, guys... sigh. The lab bench I had cleared to do my molecular biology work was in a total mess when I was back. And the reagents used for a test too... strewn all over the floor with half used reagents in various cardboxes. I had to spend a good hour or more clearing up before I could even start! Now that I'm in the lab everyday though there's no chance for them to mess it up hahaha. Yeah, I'm like, the only girl in the group. And the only one trained in biology, or more specifically, in molecular biology too. I sent my sup the qPCR results... finally, after I finished a bunch of samples. And he was very impressed, even though I was not. I'd been having trouble with the recent few plates and quite a lot of values were wildly off, or there was no reading at all, and I had yet to repeat those samples. But then again, considering that its only been two weeks... indeed I'd been working really fast. I'd been doing like 3 plates a day for the whole of last week after all. That was I only have to prepare my reagents once for the day and I'd save about 1 hour of preparation time per plate that I do. Only bad thing is that if I make any mistake with my stock, all three plates gets destroy, as happened to me last Thursday :( Totally made me depressed and wreaked my momentum. Thankfully plates since then was fine so it was only the erm... daily reagent stock that I messed up with, and not the master stock that I prepared the day before that was messed up. Sorry am I confusing you here?

Its like this. There's a bunch of reagents that we use in qPCR, such as primers and probes, and those are obtained from various companies. We dilute the stock solutions of those that we obtained from the company into well... another stock solution. And with those self diluted stocks, it gets further diluted into the ones that we will directly use for our experiments. While doing the experiments, we will have to mix a bunch of reagents together, including those diluted twice primers and probes. I'd prepare three plates worth of reagents at once (well no. of plates depending on how many I'd do that day, once mixed the reagents can't be stored for long), so that kind of makes those tubes of mixed reagents another stock solution. Gosh am I mixing up the definition of stock solution here? Hahaha. So I had prepared both the first and second dilution stock, and I was worried that I'd messed up then cos that would mean A LOT of reagent wasted. Whereas if I'd mess up on the final mixing step it was only a day's worth of reagents (and experiments) that I'd screwed up. Still not a good thing of course. So now I'm even more cautious when preparing my reagents and I've taken additional steps - what the HR could classify as administrative prevention, to make sure I don't mess up my adding order. Basically what I do is to centrifuge my reagents right before I use it, two at a time (only two per mix), and I only take them out of the centrifuge right before use. So I know which tube has not been added - because its still in the centrifuge. Yeah, I need to do all sorts of things like this, because its very easy to lose track of which one you've added till in experiments. Gosh especially for 96 well plates. I have to be very focused and keep a clear count when adding, because many a times you can't tell if the reagent has been added into a particular well or not - well its hard for the white roche qPCR plates at least. So I hate it when people disturb me when I'm halfway though the plate. Too easy to lose track, too easy to mess up. And it’s a good 90mins of waiting before you get the results. All in all for each plate it takes me... 1 hour to prepare the reagents (including 15mins or more of holding tubes in my palm and trying to thaw them :X, so it'll take shorter if I have time to let them thaw earlier, but normally I start first thing in the morning, or right after lunch, and again, its not very good to let the reagents thaw for too long, they'll spoil!), 30+ mins to pipette the reagents into a plate, and 90 mins to run the plate. 3 hours of work wow. That's why all those errors recently are making me pissed. And I swear its not my fault, but rather the low concentration of the target DNA that's the problem. I'm still getting very nice duplicates for most of my wells. Most of them the standard deviation is like... 0.1 or 0.2... way below the 0.5 or 1 standard deviation unacceptable standard. Yeah my pipetting skills are good and I'm proud of it.

My sup has been saying that they'll like to have a manuscript out of the latest set of experiment they are doing, and he's got me involved in it so that he can recommend to the prof that my name be added to the manuscript. Gosh I am so very grateful to my sup. Like seriously... even having a chance to get my name on papers is great news to me. Don't forget that I've barely joined the group for half a year! (Of which roughly... two months I've been unable to do lab at that!) Do people get a chance to have a shot at a paper so soon after they've joined? I really have no idea, but I'm still glad nonetheless! I really hope the experiment goes well... and of cos that the prof will deem my contribution significant enough to get a name on the manuscript haha. It all boils down to how significant they view the qPCR data as I suppose...? Oh wells.

Hmm I guess that's enough from me for now! Till next time!

Ah yes... my fic... I'm aiming for a weekly release, so do stay tuned! XD